1 Mrs. Hatch and her friends seemed to float together outside the bounds of time and space.
2 The mortal maid on the shore is helpless against the siren who loves her prey: such victims are floated back dead from their adventure.
3 On and on it flowed, a current of meaningless sound, on which, startlingly enough, a familiar name now and then floated to the surface.
4 But he would see clearer, breathe freer in her presence: she was at once the dead weight at his breast and the spar which should float them to safety.
5 Of late the sleep it had brought her had been more broken and less profound; there had been nights when she was perpetually floating up through it to consciousness.
6 That lady, though still floating in the void, showed faint symptoms of developing an outline; and in this endeavour she was actively seconded by Mr. Melville Stancy.
7 Mrs. Bry pressed on, evidently animated by the resolve to reach a certain point in the rooms; but Mrs. Fisher, as she passed Lily, broke from her towing-line, and let herself float to the girl's side.
8 At the same moment a hansom halted at the curb-stone, and one of the figures floated down to it in a haze of evening draperies; while the other, black and bulky, remained persistently projected against the light.
9 Down the lantern-hung Promenade, snatches of band-music floated above the hum of the crowd and the soft tossing of boughs in dusky gardens; and between these gardens and the backs of the stands there flowed a stream of people in whom the vociferous carnival mood seemed tempered by the growing languor of the season.